The present invention relates to an innovatory formulation of a priming mixture for cartridges for small firearms.
It is known that in cartridges a percussion primer is present which contains the so-called priming mixture firing the projectile propelling charge.
Formulation of the priming mixture is very important in order to achieve the desired stability and sensitivity features for the specific function.
As far as a short while ago in the priming mixture formulation heavy metals and compounds thereof were used which, due to their high toxicity, are presently considered increasingly less acceptable, although minimum amounts of same are concerned.
Therefore, attempts have been made since long to reduce the content of these compounds by proposing alternative formulations. It has been proposed for example to replace barium, antimony and lead compounds with zinc peroxide, copper oxide, manganese dioxide or tin oxide.
These alternative formulations however have disadvantages that do not make them quite satisfactory, due to their residual toxicity as well as to the high production cost and unstable features upon temperature variations and also due to their reduced ballistic efficacy. For example, zinc peroxide is expensive and can hardly be obtained in a pure state and also has a reduced sensitivity at low temperatures.
It is a general aim of the present invention to obviate the above mentioned drawbacks by providing a priming mixture having high ballistic, stability and sensitivity features although at the same time it does not contain heavy metals or other compounds that are unacceptable due to toxicity.